When Research In Motion unveiled its BlackBerry Playbook tablet on Monday, including the new QNX-based operating system it runs, I already speculated that it would probably make its way onto RIM's smartphones as well. RIM has now confirmed this suspicion.

Again, I differ to experience. It's different when you're the market leader and innovating at a breakneck pace, creating standards faster than developers can keep up and generating profits hand over fist. However, there will come a time when innovation on a platform slows and quality is measured by how well it supports new standards led by other (possibly competing) companies. The same is true if you're developing for a platform that chases the market leader. My experience tells me that QNX lacks this support. It chases 80% of functionality of competitors well, but the last 20% comes at a premium and... in the past... they didn't quite deliver... for me. YMMV.

Cloud applications have brought development to the server and as long as you have an up-to-date browser, you're somewhat supportable. Server-based solutions are *somewhat* platform agnostic.

Embedded development frequently turns this around. Your platform becomes more important. You'll want your applications to work with hardware, ie, inserting gps coordinates to a picture, or something to that effect. From a vendor's standpoint, it's a constant struggle to keep up with new drivers, honing apis and developer kits. It's not going to be easy for QNX, despite the fact that they have RIM numbers.